


Inverse Halo

by dango96



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: BDSM, Bloodletting, Established Relationship, F/M, Knifeplay, Masochism, No Spoilers, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Rope Bondage, Subspace, Trust, sub-ert von vestra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24632803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dango96/pseuds/dango96
Summary: "Basically I'm looking for Hubert wanting to get roughed up in bed, but too control-freak-y to actually let someone hurt him. So the solution is for his partner to force him into it - details up to you, although I want it to be consensual (that is, Hubert's partner is, with his consent, "forcing" him to let them hurt him) and I'd prefer not drugs. Partner can be Byleth or any of the Academy students. Thanks!"Hubert wants to be hurt in bed. His brain won't let him. Byleth is, as always, relentlessly accommodating.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 12
Kudos: 93
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	Inverse Halo

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Three Houses Kink Meme](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/). I'm just a real sucker for anything that involves Hubert being forced to trust someone other than Edelgard.

"I want you to hurt me."

It's like a little love confession. Words breathed inbetween hot kisses as Hubert straddles Byleth on the mattress, his face flushed with embarrassment but also _want_.

The specifics - well. He growls out a few examples, but it's made clear that Byleth is encouraged to be _creative_. And though she doesn't necessarily _want_ to hurt him, she loves to please him - and if that's what it takes, then that's what she will do.

The problem comes when Byleth actually attempts to do so.

She rolls him onto his back, pulls the dagger from her belt, angles it parallel to the white expanse of his bare chest. A long, clean cut will do - something shallow, easily healable. It won't even leave a scar.

But before the blade can meet his flesh, she finds herself disarmed. A practiced motion, his hand moving as quick as a fox, ending with the weapon clattering to the floor.

Byleth blinks at him, expressionless. "Um."

It's a different kind of embarrassment on his face now - Hubert looks borderline _sheepish_.

"I... apologize," Hubert mumbles. "That was purely reflex. You understand, don't you?"

And she does, more keenly than anyone else could. War did something to everyone who fought in their army - but for her and Hubert, it goes even beyond that. Before the war had started, before they'd even come to the Academy, they'd been training to always be on guard, to always have knives under their pillows. Their reflexes are the only difference between a slit throat or living to see another day.

Vulnerability does not come easily for them.

"Yeah," Byleth replies, her expression soft with empathy. "Do you want me to try again?"

Hubert sighs, visibly trying to force himself to relax. "Please do."

She takes a different approach, this time. They start off kissing lazily, but it quickly evolves into the more heated pace from before - and in the middle of it, she abruptly grabs a fistful of his hair, wrenching him forcibly onto his front so that she can pin him and shove his face into the mattress.

But Hubert bucks under her, _snarls_ , and becomes an animalistic bundle of flailing limbs - it's enough that Byleth nearly falls off the bed.

Especially when he accidentally elbows her in the face.

"Ow!"

Hubert flinches, the fight in him instantly dying as he rushes to comfort his lover, even as he's panting with adrenaline. Seeing the desperately apologetic expression on his face, Byleth can't even find it in herself to be mad.

"Byleth, I'm so sorry-" Hubert frowns, cupping her cheeks, brushing strands of hair away from her face. "Are you hurt? Did I hurt you, my love?"

"I don't think so-" Her nose feels a little bruised, but it's nothing that will hurt in the morning. "Just a little sore."

A silence passes between them, neither quite knowing what to say. Unfortunately, the mood has been more or less ruined - both of them sitting awkward, half-dressed, Hubert's hair a tousled mess and Byleth's cheeks red.

Byleth lowers her hand from where she'd been holding her face, frowning a little.

"Are you sure this is really what you want, Hubert?"

"Yes, I-" Hubert replies, and there's a hint of frustrated desperation in his voice. "For a long time, I... have... gained pleasure from pain."

"You're making it pretty impossible for me to hurt you," Byleth points out cheekily, feeling some of the tension in her body melting away.

"I'm so sorry," Hubert sighs, combing his fingers through his bangs to try and tame them back into place. "I can't seem to turn this off."

Her face softens, and she leans forward to kiss him tenderly on the cheek. Intimacy has always been an awkward, explorative thing between the two of them - neither of them had ever laid with another, before each other. And this is just another strange facet to navigate.

"Maybe," she murmurs gently, "I could surprise you sometime. Tie you up, so you wouldn't be able to fight back. Would you like that?"

Hubert hesitates, a little bit of stiffness in his body, as if resisting the concept of surrendering himself so fully to another's control.

"And we'll have a special word." Byleth's kisses spread to the bridge of his nose, peppering soft touches of her lips over his skin. "Something you can say to make me stop, any time you want."

The tension drains from him near-instantly, and he closes his eyes, relaxing into her touch. "You're so clever, my love."

"That's why you married me," she murmurs, pressing a delicate kiss to his mouth.

\--

They decide on three things that night - a word, a time, a locale.

The safeword: 'cabbage'. Brief, memorable, and deeply unsexy.

The time: an hour before midnight, right after Hubert finishes his reports for the day.

The locale: their quarters, where they won't be interrupted.

Hubert's hand shakes as the clock grows near the hour, quill stuttering on the parchment. He has already dressed down for the occasion, merely a pair of loose pants and a half-unbuttoned silk shirt, and rid himself of any implements of resistance - the hidden blade on his wrist, the paralytic agent on the inside of his shirt, the knife tucked into his shoe, the garrote curled around his belt.

He feels naked without them. It's an act of trust on many levels - trust that Byleth will not hurt him, trust that no one else will hurt him, trust that he is safe here and that there is no cause for assassins to sneak in through his window.

He cannot bring himself to fully acquiesce to it, which is why there are still bars on the window and a hidden knife on the underside of his desk. But his relationship with Byleth has been a series of these slow concessions, of loosening his control by degrees.

 _This is enough,_ he reassures himself, setting the quill back in its holder, even if he can't wholly bring himself to believe it.

It's at that moment that the lock turns with a familiar heavy sound. There are only two people on the planet who have the key to that lock, and only one of whom he is expecting at this hour.

It should reassure him. It's just his wife, after all. But instead, it fills him with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

"Byleth," he greets, turning his head to look just slightly over his shoulder, his voice stiff and business-like.

"Hubert," she replies in turn, nudging the door shut with her heel and locking it again. Candlelight outlines her figure in the darkness, and a thrill of excitement runs up his spine when he realizes she's holding _rope_. "Will you make this easy for me?"

Hubert gets up from his chair, unbuttons his shirt all the way, casts it off of his shoulders. He may as well ease the process of undressing himself as much as he can - it won't be easy when he's tied up. "You know I can't."

Byleth draws closer, stalking him like a predator. Her eyes flash in the light, and he is reminded once more that she is a mercenary - one of the most renowned for striking fear into the hearts of her enemies. She has tied up and subdued many a man before him.

The air thickens. The silence stretches between them, as tense as steel cord.

And then she strikes, lunging at him. Hubert tries, instinctively, to buck and squirm out of her grip as she shoves him to the floor - Miasma crackles to life in his fingers, only to extinguish immediately with a sharp jolt of pain. He looks over, wide-eyed, and finds his wrist trapped in a magic limiter, a piece of technology for restraining mages that they'd recovered from the base of Those Who Slither In The Dark.

It looks a bit like a single handcuff engraved with runes, and before he knows it, his other hand is trapped in one, as well. The moment of surprise is enough for her to yank his pants off, tearing the fabric as he kicks fruitlessly underneath her.

His now-bare legs are soon bound together, and once that's done, it takes barely any time at all to tie his wrists behind his back. With a surprising amount of strength that he still finds himself constantly underestimating, Byleth actually _picks him up_ , carrying him over and tossing him roughly onto the bed.

She then unties him in degrees - his legs, only to bind each ankle in turn, then his wrists, following the same pattern. It occurs to him that she is tying him to the bed, spread-eagled across it in his smallclothes.

There is a bit of give in the rope, enough for him to move his arms and legs slightly, but not nearly enough to struggle. And he - he is _caught_ , he realizes. Trapped, truly helpless without recourse, a state he hasn't been in for over a decade.

And it was entirely too easy.

The adrenaline courses through him even harder, every nerve alive and singing, his eyes wide and his body tense. He's panting, he realizes, struggling not to hyperventilate - it's not quite _panic_ , but something nonetheless overwhelming, flooding him with the need to do _something_ to alleviate it, to put him back in control.

"Hubert. Hey."

Byleth's voice pierces the heaviness of his own mind, and he forces himself to focus on her - finding her sitting atop him, the familiar weight somehow soothing. She looks... _concerned_. He can't figure out why.

"Hubert," she repeats, leaning forward, holding his face, rubbing his cheeks. The touch is like a drink of cold water he hadn't known he needed, and he closes his eyes, shuddering. "Are you okay?"

"No," he answers, the words feeling like they're not quite coming from his own mouth, then thinks twice about it. "I don't know. Maybe."

"That's okay," she murmurs, and that alone helps to relax him slightly. He does not feel okay - but Byleth says it's alright, and he wants to believe her. "Can you remember the safeword?"

"Cabbage," he whispers.

"Good." He feels her fingers slide down to his neck, and tenses - _strangling, suffocation, a depletion of blood to the brain, brain death within minutes_ \- only to start to relax again as she strokes over the taut muscles there, rubs outward onto his clavicle and shoulders. "You're safe, Hubert. I'm not going to do anything to you that you don't want me to do. It's okay."

It's like the push and pull of ocean waves, crashing into rocks then receding. He is so painfully aware of his vulnerability, of how easily he could be killed in this moment - but then her words bring him down, ease him into a sense of safety once again. With every roll of the tide, he seems to slip deeper into the dark waters of her voice, losing his sense of self.

By the time her hands slide over his belly, he is amazed to hardly feel anything at all. His mind simply observes as she pulls down his underwear, gently squeezes his flaccid cock.

"Hubert," Byleth repeats, and he opens his eyes, breathing evenly. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," he replies, only to feel the familiar prickle of fear return as the glint of a blade enters his peripheral vision. Byleth is holding a knife - one he'd given her a while back, he recognizes, ornately engraved and finely sharpened.

It's just her. Her hand, her knife. She said she wouldn't do anything he doesn't want. Byleth doesn't lie. He can believe her. He has to try. He wants this so _badly_.

"You wanted me to hurt you. Do you still want that?"

Hubert shivers under her, feeling himself starting to grow hard at the mere thought of it. "Please."

"The safeword."

"Cabbage," Hubert breathes.

"That's perfect," Byleth praises softly, as she presses the sharp edge to his chest and slowly, lovingly slices downward.

Pain blossoms white-hot on his newly-opened skin, awakening his nerves once more, and he instinctively yanks at his bonds, convulsing underneath her. Panic surges through the fog of comfort he'd been lulled into, singing _you are not in control, you are in danger_ \- only to be gently kissed into submission, Byleth's lips caressing his face, whispering sweet nothings.

Panic starts to quell, leaving nothing but that beautiful agony behind, his chest heaving as blood drips down from the surface-level cut. He is rock hard, now, his flushed cock straining against the cool air.

"More," he pleads. Now more than ever, Byleth resembles a goddess, perched on top of him with her bloody knife, craving sacrifice.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Hubert groans, voice husky with need. "Please. Byleth-"

She doesn't hesitate. Another cut, this time across his abdomen, like drawing a long, elegant red line across his flushing, sweating skin.

He twists against the bed as a sobbing moan rips itself out of him, chest shaking with hard, uneven breaths. Oh, it _hurts_ \- and that pain dances so, so near to pleasure, enough as to become indistinguishable, one sensation melting into another.

His head is nearly empty now, panic dissipating from coherent thought into a mere rush of chemicals, one of many warring in his brain.

"Please, please," he begs, edging into hazy desperation. He can feel himself leaking, he's unbearably sensitive, every inch of his skin alive and awake and pleading for her touch -

And the knife digs into him, slices quickly below his navel - still a surface-level cut but oh,

oh

 _oh_ , it's more than enough.

With a fruitless upward thrust of his hips, Hubert comes violently, harder than he ever has before.

Reality itself falls away, piece by piece. All that remains is a starry black, the pinpoints of light flashing behind his closed eyelids, that white-hot slice of pain like a constellation throbbing in his sky.

And when reality starts to return, he feels - numb, outside of himself, every cell of his being thrumming with a tingling, pleasurable ache. His belly is cold, white spend mixing with the red of his blood. He feels like everything, and at the same time, like nothing at all.

The sensation of a wet cloth lathing over him slowly pulls him back, anchors him to the present. The familiar warmth of Faith magic follows it, forcibly sealing his cuts. Were he more aware of himself, he'd regret not having the scars to remember this night for the rest of his life.

"Hubert," Byleth whispers. "Hubert."

He squints his eyelids open. It's dreamlike, the way his brain struggles to focus and understand. But once again, Byleth helps to ground him.

"Are you okay?"

He can't help but chuckle, even though it feels like his sense of self has been smashed like a piggy bank right now. The sheer _peace_ he feels in this moment is overwhelming.

"Yes," he whispers in return.

She moves to untie him, but he lets out a sound near to a whimper, stopping her in her tracks.

"Please," Hubert groans, "a little longer. I want... I don't want... control."

"As long as you want," Byleth promises softly, laying beside him, beginning to gently stroke his hair. "I'll take control for as long as you want."

His heart swells with tired joy, and he is full of love for her.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed my work, it means a lot!


End file.
